These shampoos really don’t take out stains, they just add a subtle blue to a white hair/coat that makes it appear “whiter” than regular white. It may cover a minor amount of yellowing, but it’s definitely not a stain remover.
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Oh I know! I just didn’t want anyone to think I hadn’t already tried them - there are a million suggestions for them on all the threads I searched.
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I dont get my guy’s tail perfect, but this is what I do…
Wash it with hot water and GREEN Dawn dish soap. Really let it suds up, sit, and rub it a lot! Rinse and repeat. Really scrub it so I get brown foam coming off.
Then, use QuicSilver and let it sit 15 minutes.
Rinse.
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I have a paint and although he doesn’t have a white tail, there’s white everywhere else. I use Manely Long Hair coat spray and believe it helps keep his white bits cleaner. The detangler is wonderful and if I ever bothered to bathe him I think his mane would be even whiter. He lives out 24/7 in a field of dirt or mud.
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I too feel your pain. Mostly I’ve learned to just pretend that the yellowish color is a natural “dirty-blond” as opposed to blond that is dirty. But I"m good at denial.
I’ve looked at the Manely products website. I’m intrigued. They say that the “Shock” products will help to make the tail softer, more conditioned and less yellow. For real? I’ve noticed a couple of posters that have been using it, so I’d like to hear more details.
The one thing that puts me off about the Manely website (aside from my own scepticism) is it’s a little cult-like: Follow this expensive protocol and your life will be changed forever. I’d like to believe but I’m also cheap…
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Me too. Also I can’t find ingredients on their website… even tho a FB post they said says "We list all our ingredients!!! We are made for horses, dogs people too! When a product does not list them all they just don’t want you to know. …Example…
… “proprietary blend” … Of what???
What are they hiding???
Typical of the animal product market … If they can not show what the ingredients are do not Buy!!! "
Luckily Smartpack gives ingredients. I am not a chemist but I don’t think there’s anything in these products that can lift stains?
Polisher: Cyclopentasiloxane, Cyclotetrasiloxane, Dimethazone, Phenyl Trimethicone, Panthenol (Pro Vitamin B5), Keratin amino acids, Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate, Fragrances
Conditioner: Purified Water, Dicetyldimonium Chloride, Stearyl Alcohol, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearalkonium Chloride, Glyceryl Stearate, Stearamidopropyl, Dimethylamine, Emulsifying wax, peg-7 glyceryl cocoate, Aloe Vera Gel, Nettle Extract, Sage Extract, Chamomile Extract, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Fragrance, Lmidazolidinyl Rea, Methylparaben, Proplyparaben, Benzophenone-4, Tetrasodium EDTA.
The instructions for SHOCK are "Use SHOCK treatment (equal parts Polisher and Conditoner) … 3 – 5xs a week for 2 weeks. " no rinsing, “Works through hydration and dissolving and improving the hair gently.”
and “For lifting urine stains we suggest using this for 2 weeks to a month or more, depending on the severity of the stains.”
I make up my own tail spray bottle of equal parts water, conditioner and laser sheen… might this be the same thing?
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I am not sure that the color isn’t part of her graying process. My mare’s tail didn’t just go poof and was white. I think as the melanin disappears from the hair, there can be many shades before it finally turns white. I say that because the whole bottom is that uniform color. My mare’s peed on, pooped on tail shows the stain mostly on the edges and underneath.
Good luck.
Susan
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The Roux White Minx mentioned above really does work. I used it on grey tails all the time when I was showing a lot. The little old ladies with the perfectly silver hair? That’s the bottle it comes in. 
It’s a rinse, meant to use after shampooing and rinsing that. Apply it and leave it…don’t rinse it out.
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As a ‘little old lady with perfectly silver hair’ I can assure you I don’t use White Minx rinse or bluing shampoos or conditioners! I am also careful not to pee on my hair… 
My grey mare gets a betadine bath 2-3 times a year as a preventative and I had noticed any urine stains disappeared. Thanks for explaining why it worked, Halfhalt896!
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I haven’t tried Manely Long Hair’s shock protocol, just the coat spray and detangler. FWIW, I have a sample bottle of Cowboy Magic that I’m using on his tail and I have to reapply each time I want to comb it out. MLH, I can get away with a few times without reapplying. It smells really nice too.
The website sells all sorts of magical brushes; I don’t have them. The coat spray comes with two spray bottles. One of them requires a large amount of conditioner to water ratio; I never use that one, just the larger regular bottle.
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Forgive me for hijacking some, I can create a separate post if need be. But this kind of applies as well.
Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping the higher up hairs contained and out of the way? I have a completely grayed out broodmare who, when I bought her, had a sparkling white tail that had clearly been well taken care of. She had a very difficult foaling this spring (backwards foal that took 2 1/2 hours to remove). She now has some nerve damage back there and as a result, some urine leakage. It is improving, but her tail is now orange. I tried bagging it through the summer, but swatting at flies resulted in her losing the bag. And even when the bag was on, the top hairs that don’t fit in the bag continued to stain. Any creative “mud-knot-like” braid contraption I can do to keep those hairs out of the way without damaging them? Unfortunately, heading in to winter soon I won’t be able to wash and upkeep very well. Tail maintenance in the winter is usually a “braid it, bag it, and deal with it in the spring” kind of deal 
I know people who have done a regular top of the tail braid, but loosely, to help prevent pee or poop stains on dock hair.
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Good idea. I braid professionally so fully aware that my standard hunter braid would destroy a tail if left in very long. Wonder if I could do a combination of a loose braid with some yarn or wide bands to help it last longer. I opened the pic of your horse’s tail and hers is about the color of the bottom of your tail, but she’s completely white, so doesn’t even have the dark hairs to blend down in to the stained part She’s a white horse with an orange tail, and while she is a broodmare, it makes me sick that her tail used to be so pretty.
my stallion periodically gets what i call “after squirts” - normal poop, then some liquid at end. He is as close to white as a gray can be with a huge tail. I do the same as in this pic to pull the underhairs to the outside of tail. Give it a try - nothing to lose. Another option, though more drastic is you could cut off some of those hairs. 
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It looks like this mare is still greying. My experience with a tail in transition is that the hair doesn’t go silver all at once. I’ve had 2 dark chestnuts go grey.
One I got as a 6yo and she was dapple grey in her body but the hair growing out of the end of her tailbone was actually growing out blonde at the root. So it looked like pissy tail and it definitely was not. Over a couple of years those hairs actually got darker and grey, so no longer yellow, but definitely darker. These pictures are about a year apart, and not great fir what I’m trying to show, but you can see that as he gets more grey his tail is less brown?
Her son I’ve had since birth and he was liver chestnut going grey and now 4. His tail did a lot of the same thing, where as he’s greying his mane and tail have actually gotten darker. Top is at 4, bottom at 3.
Beautiful horse!
